Labor of Love

  The Coleman Series

  Katie Winters

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © 2024 by Katie Winters

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Katie Winters holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Coming Next in the Coleman Series

  Other Books by Katie Winters

  Connect with Katie Winters

  Chapter One

  It was never easy for Reese to admit that his son didn’t like him.

  It wasn’t that Joel didn’t love him, of course. Love was easy. Joel loved him the way you were loved someone who’d brought you into the world and supported you for the better part of eighteen years. He loved him because Reese had taught him how to ride a bike and how to drive a car and how to throw a baseball. He loved him because Reese had read him bedtime stories and taken him to basketball games and made him chocolate chip cookies when Joel’s first girlfriend had broken up with him at thirteen.

  At least, Reese hoped Joel loved him, even if he didn’t like him.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When Joel and Alexis were children, Reese had imagined them growing up and living alongside him in Martha’s Vineyard. He’d imagined teaching their future children how to throw baseballs and make chocolate chip cookies and sail across the Vineyard Sound. He’d imagined so much.

  But that was before everything happened. Before everything changed.

  Reese and Oriana were at Joel’s place in the suburbs of Providence, Rhode Island, for the weekend. It was a three-bedroom, two-bathroom ranch with a jewel-colored pool in the backyard and a library down the street. Joel had bought the place for his wife and two children after his promotion last year. At the time, Reese had told him how proud he was of him. Joel had flinched and said, “You don’t have to say things like that.”

  What had Joel meant by that? Reese wondered now. Had he meant it was too late to pretend we liked each other? Was it too late to fake our friendship?

  Joel’s boys were Tyler, age six, and Peter, age four. Just now, they were in the shallow end of the pool. Tyler wore flotation devices on his arms, and Peter sat with his mother on a blow-up raft because he was still too frightened of the water to brave it by himself. Peter watched Tyler as he swam frantically up and down the shallow end as though he had something to prove. “Watch me, Mom!” he cried. “Are you watching?”

  “I’m right here, honey,” Lauren said every time.

  “He’s so athletic,” Oriana told Joel. She took a long drink from her iced tea and smiled. She was always at ease around Joel in ways Reese no longer knew how to be. “Just like you.”

  “I wasn’t athletic,” Joel said.

  “You won sectionals in basketball three years in a row!” Oriana reminded him.

  “Martha’s Vineyard didn’t have a whole lot of competition.” Joel tugged his collar and glanced at Reese. Since their arrival a half hour ago, Joel and Reese hadn’t exchanged more than three words. Oriana had done all the talking.

  “You want a beer, Dad?” Joel asked.

  Reese’s adrenaline spiked. He cares enough to offer you a beer. “That sounds great, buddy.”

  Buddy? Why are you calling him buddy all of a sudden? Don’t scare him off!

  Joel flinched and got up to retrieve two Bud Lights from the kitchen. Tyler called up to Grandma. “Are you watching, Grandma?”

  “You’re super fast!” Oriana said.

  Lauren laughed and tried to make eye contact with Reese. Reese avoided it and stared at the other end of the pool, where a piece of tile had chipped. Lauren’s smile turned sour, as it always did.

  “How was your drive over today?” Lauren asked.

  Oriana glanced at Reese nervously.

  “It wasn’t too bad,” Reese said. “A bit of rain halfway but it cleared up.”

  “It’s been a beautiful spring,” Lauren said.

  Reese had absolutely no idea what to say to this woman. Technically, they’d known Lauren for ten years by now. They’d met her when Lauren’s family moved to Martha’s Vineyard in 2014 when her father founded an ill-fated holiday resort. Joel saw Lauren at the docks in early summer and had immediately turned pale and reticent. Reese had never seen him like that before. Joel completely lost his head over that girl.

  Rumor had it that Joel had dumped his girlfriend later that week to pursue Lauren. Reese remembered calling it inflammatory at the time and asking Oriana, When did our son become so rash? Reese had liked the other girlfriend, the one he’d dumped Lauren for. She was from a kind and long-standing Vineyard family, got good grades, babysat for local families, and played the clarinet. He didn’t know what to make of Lauren at the time.

  Now he knew what to make of her. He didn’t like her. And he didn’t love her.

  The kids were another story entirely. That was the thing about becoming a grandfather. You poured love onto them without holding anything back.

  The trouble was that Reese just didn’t know them as well as his other grandson, Benny. Benny lived on the Vineyard and was Reese’s best bud.

  Joel returned with the beers. Lauren got out of the pool with Peter, who ran to his sandbox and immediately made himself filthy.

  “I’d better get started on the burgers,” Lauren said.

  “Let me help you,” Oriana offered.

  Reese cast Oriana a look. You can’t leave me alone with him.

  And Oriana’s returned a look. He’s your son. Deal with it.

  She had a point.

  “Mom says you’ve been underwater with work lately,” Joel said. He sipped his beer with his eyes on Tyler, who remained in the pool. He was a dutiful husband and father, just like Reese.

  “I bit off more than I can chew this year. I’ve been putting in longer hours than normal. But your mother can’t talk. She’s always somewhere between Martha’s Vineyard and whatever art collection she’s after.”

  “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” Joel said.

  “And you? How’s your work?” Reese asked.

  “Same old.” Joel took a long sip of beer, then jumped up when he saw that Tyler’s right arm’s inflatable ring had lost too much air. “Let me help you with that, buddy.”

  Buddy. Just like Reese had always called him back in the day. Back when they’d liked each other. Back when love had been a natural thing.

  Over hamburgers and homemade onion rings that night, things were strained. It was easier to talk about the children and what they were up to than acknowledge the elephant in the room. When the silence stretched on for too long, Oriana jumped to a new topic.

  “You said you were watching Roland’s granddaughter on television?”

  “I’ve been obsessed with it. Her name is Rachelle, right?” Lauren said.

  “She’s really something,” Oriana said. “You know she’s going to go to Rome with Diana to work at her restaurant for the summer?”

  “Incredible. Can you imagine being in your early twenties and living in Rome?” Lauren shook her head. “I had Tyler when we were twenty-one. Sometimes I wonder if we grew up too quickly.”

  “We had kids young, too. I liked it, though. It forced me to decide what was actually important to me and what could slip through the cracks,” Oriana said.

  Oriana could talk to anyone. She could charm a houseplant.

  Ordinarily, Reese was quite charming too. But in front of Lauren and Joel, it was like he transformed into a self-doubting and quiet man who was better left at home. With the children, he tried to remember to crack jokes, chase them around, and be the fun-loving Reese he knew himself to be. He couldn’t let his broken heart get in the way, not all the time. But it was difficult! Oriana had suggested therapy. But Reese always thought the next time they saw each other would be better. He was always wrong.

  After dinner, Lauren and Oriana took the kids inside to clean them up and get them ready for bed. Reese had been dreading this. He’d even offered to take care of the children’s rituals instead. But Oriana adored those quiet moments in shadowed rooms, reading books and saying, “Sweet dreams.” He didn’t want to take it away from her. Benny had nearly died last year of cancer, so moments like these were precious.

  Both Reese and Oriana had assumed Benny’s cancer and remission would bring their family closer together. And it had for maybe a week or two until Joel pulled away again. He stopped calling and didn’t answer his phone. He even stopped sending photographs of the children without Reese or Oriana asking him to. Begging him to, more like.

  Now, with Joel across from him at the picnic table, Reese was a
t a loss about what to do or say. Overhead, the moon hung low in the sky, and the air was crisper, which was proof it was still just the end of May. Real summer was around the corner. You could smell the pollen, fledgling flowers, and wet earth in the air.

  Reese raised his beer and looked at his son, trying to align his memories of his little boy with this broad-shouldered twenty-eight-year-old before him. It was true that twenty-eight was still so young, but it was also true that Reese hadn’t felt young at twenty-eight. He’d carried the world on his shoulders. He’d fought for Oriana’s career and for his, especially when he’d switched to coding apps after the tech boom flipped the world on its head. Joel didn’t look so much like Reese, nor like Reese’s own father. His looks leaned more toward Oriana’s side of the family. The Colemans. All her life, Oriana had known her father had another family on Nantucket Island. She’d always known that he’d abandoned his original family for her, her sister, and their mother. Reese had often wondered what knowing that had done to her psyche. He’d revered his father up until his death three years ago. He’d genuinely believed he could do no wrong.

  Joel didn’t think that of Reese.

  “And how about you?” Reese asked. “Your job going okay?”

  It was a safe question about work. It wasn’t emotional and didn’t carry any details about the past.

  But that was when Joel burst into tears. His face was scrunched, and his shoulders heaved. Reese was stricken. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Joel like this. Maybe at ten? Eleven? Reese got to his feet and hurried around to touch his son on the shoulder. What had he done wrong this time? And what could he say to make it right?

  “I’m such a fool,” Joel mumbled into his hands. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  Reese’s heart turned to putty. All of his fatherly instincts came back. He pulled his chair over to Joel’s and leaned toward him. “Nobody knows what they’re doing,” he told him. “We’re all just making it up as we go along.”

  What happened? Was Lauren cheating on him? Were the kids sick? Was Joel sick?

  Reese’s heart pumped as he ticked off all the possible reasons for Joel’s spontaneous breakdown.

  Joel pressed his fists against his eye sockets and quieted down. Still, his shoulders quivered. “I don’t know what to say. I think I needed that. I think I’ve needed it for a long time.”

  Reese remained quiet, even when he accidentally bit his tongue. He was nervous. Did Joel want to talk about what had happened? Did he finally want to hash out the details of the past?

  Reese imagined Joel saying, This is why I left when I was eighteen years old. This is why I hated you for so long.

  Instead, Joel said, “I lost my job a few months back. Lauren doesn’t know.”

  Reese melted into the back of his chair and let all the air out of his lungs. Was that it? Jobs come and go. But then again, Joel had worked remarkably hard to go up the ranks at his tech job. It wasn’t always clear to Reese what Joel did now that he’d stepped away from coding and moved to a bigger title. For Reese, there was a joy in coding. A joy in making something new from a “language” of numbers and letters.

  The fact that Joel even learned how to code had always mystified Reese. Apparently, they had the same skill sets and looked at the world the same way. Yet they couldn’t get along.

  Reese tried to use a neutral tone. “What happened?”

  “We failed the past few quarters. Have to cut back,” Joel said. “Ironically, I was the one who suggested we slash a few jobs here and there. They’d given me an enormous promotion last year. Plus a bonus. And now?” Another sob rattled through him, and he shook his head. “I feel so weak, Dad.”

  At the word “dad,” Reese felt prepared to move mountains to help Joel. He couldn’t remember the last time Reese had come to him with his problems. It must have been more than ten years.

  “Lauren is so happy here in this new house,” Joel said. “And the kids love this pool and the other neighborhood kids. Everything looks perfect on the surface. But every morning I get up, go for a run, shower, put on my suit, and drive around the country roads until I have to come home. I’m faking it. I spend time at diners. I read paperbacks. And of course I apply for jobs here and there. But Providence isn’t exactly a hub of technology. I’ll have to move the family. I’ll have to take Lauren away from her sister and Peter away from his great preschool and Tyler away from his swim lessons, and I just…” He shook his head and tried to laugh. “I sound insane.”

  “You don’t.”

  “I had a picture for my life,” Joel said. “A way I thought it would play out. And the day I lost my job, I decided to hang on to that picture and keep pretending it was true. And now I’m up to my ears in debt. God knows what Lauren will say when she finds out.”

  Reese’s head throbbed. For the millionth time since Lauren walked down the dock in Martha’s Vineyard, Reese tried to imagine what Lauren and Joel talked about and how their conversations rolled along. Tonight, Lauren had seemed like a nice enough mother and wife. But Reese knew better.

  Joel got up to grab two beers. Reese remained on the porch and crossed his arms so tightly over his chest that they cracked. Suddenly, he was blown over with a memory. It must have been the summer before Oriana and Reese moved the kids back home from Manhattan, before they’d finally bought their dream home in Martha’s Vineyard. At the time, Alexis and Joel were city kids, and Reese was a city father in every sense of the word. Because Oriana had been so driven and moving up the ranks as an art dealer, Reese had pitched in far more than fifty percent of the childcare. It was probably around seventy or seventy-five, in fact. But he never complained. He adored being a father more than anything. He adored being the only father at the playground, chatting with the mothers about exciting milestones in their children’s lives and about their husband’s jobs and about recipes they’d tried out lately. Sometimes he and Oriana hired a nanny to pick up the slack, but more often, it was all him.

  But then, one afternoon, Reese lost Joel in Central Park.

  Joel returned with the beers. He looked forlorn and exhausted. Clearly, the lie he’d told and kept telling was eating him alive.

  “Do you remember that day in Central Park?” Reese asked.

  “The day I got lost?” Joel asked.

  Reese grimaced. “The day I lost you.”

  Joel was quiet. Overhead, a large bird passed over the billowing clouds.

  “Alexis was crying. I can’t remember what she needed or what happened. Maybe she fell or needed a snack or ate some sand. Who knows. But when I turned around, you were gone. I ran around the park with Alexis in my arms, frantically asking anyone and everyone if they’d seen you. That was so many years ago. It wasn’t like I had a smart phone and could just show a picture. It was hard to get myself to calm down enough to explain it to the cops there at the park. Night was coming on fast. I told them I wouldn’t leave the park until we found you. They were looking at me like I was nuts.”

  Joel’s eyes were now just as large as they were back then, and he peered at Reese through the dark as he listened to this story.

  “I remember,” Joel said quietly. “I remember getting lost in what felt like the biggest woods in the world. I felt like I was miles away from the city. I was sure I’d never see my sister or my mom or dad again.”

  “It was about a half hour after the cops said they wanted to kick me out that I found you. I was screaming through the dark with Alexis half asleep in the stroller. And then suddenly there you were. There were leaves in your hair. You had several stones in your pocket. You were collecting them.”

  Joel wrapped his face in his hands and slumped forward. It felt so bizarre to recount this story to Reese. It was the longest conversation they’d had in ten years.

  “I haven’t lost Tyler or Peter anywhere yet,” Joel said. “But I know something like that is coming. I know I’ll be so frantic. Running all over the place, screaming.”

  “Like me.”

  Joel nodded.

  “Back then, I barely had a career,” Reese offered. “That came after we moved to Martha’s Vineyard and your mother had a better handle on things. Plus, we had help from family and people we knew back home. What I’m saying is your family doesn’t care what your career is or what kind of businessman you are. They only care that you’re there for them.”